BAROQUE TARANTELLA
BAROQUE TARANTELLA Australian Brandenburg Orchestra with Ensemble L’Arpeggiata, City Recital Hall, Angel Place, September 10, 11, 15, 17, 18; Melbourne Recital Centre September 12 and 13. Photos by Steven Godbee
PAUL DYER constantly surprises and delights his players and audiences with adventurous and most often inspiring choices of music and guest artists; and he’s set the mark even higher than before with latest international guests, Ensemble L’Arpeggiata. Led by theorbo-wiz (and guest director for the night) Christina Pluhar the unique Paris-based company comprises singer Lucilla Galeazzi, clarinetist Gianluigi Trovesi, psaltery player Margit Übellacker and “theatrical dancer” Anna Dego. Surrounding them, on stage and in sound, the Brandenburg players gave every indication of having played with them for years rather than days in one of the most joyous collaborations ever seen or heard in the City Recital Hall.
With an unusual emphasis in the program on improvisation, our own Jess Ciampa showed why he is the percussionist of choice for outfits as diverse as Dog Trumpet, the SSO, Bernie Hayes as well as the Brandenburgs, and his interplay with Anna Dego in particular was wondrous. His drumming hands and her stamping bare feet exemplify improvisation: freewheeling yet deeply disciplined and skilled. Violinist Matt Bruce was equally dazzling in solos and ensemble, while double bass player Kirsty McCahon simultaneously anchored the collective and let it soar, along with her own dexterous fingers.
Dyer first brought L’Arpeggiata to Australia in 2007 and the fusion of the two bands was so popular then, it was an obvious choice for the ABO’s 21st birthday year celebrations. And celebratory is really what it is. It’s a rare performer who can get a Recital Hall audience doing call and response and generally joining in her Italian folk songs with just a flick of a beckoning hand and raised eyebrow, as did Lucilla Galeazzi, and the sense of fun and goodwill in the packed auditorium was palpable.
What was also particularly pleasurable and unexpected about the program was the very obvious genes inherited by the contemporary musics of jazz, klezmer and Euro-folk rock from now largely unremembered composers such as Philippus van Wichel, Luigi Rossi, Giovanni Kapsberger, Santiago de Murcia and others. Whether it’s a case of what goes around comes around, or, the more things change the more they stay the same, is arguable, but the end result was exhilarating.
And at the rarefied end of the spectrum was Übellacker’s virtuosic playing of the psaltery. It’s an ancient instrument whose descendants are the hammered dulcimer and zither and it added another tumbling, trilling layer of sweet-sharp sound to the strings as she also stepped out into the thrilling thin air of improvisation.
It’s not often an audience witnesses a group of musicians so clearly enjoying their own musicianship and that of their companions; and it’s even rarer that the musicians insist on the audience being part of that enjoyment. Baroque Tarantella was an exuberant and electrifying concert that was a reminder of why Paul Dyer is such a treasure and why the Brandenburgs so thoroughly deserve to be celebrating 21 years of wonderful music-making; especially when they invite mates such as L’Arpeggiata to the party and share it with the rest of us.
